Descendents
Archived
At 5:15 p.m. on Friday, April 18, I get a call from Jason Haug, informing me that the Descendents are on in a couple of hours at Club DV8 in downtown Salt Lake City. We arrive to find groups of young punk derelicts lurking around the front of the club, much like we did in the ’80s. Smoking cigarettes, begging for spare change and trying to come up with any way possible of scamming their way into the show. Haug and I head to the front entryway and explain to the door people that we are freelance journalists and would like to get some photos and an interview with the Descendents. The guys at the door immediately deny us, saying, “no one goes in without a ticket and the tickets are all sold out.” We immediately creep down the side alley to the back of the club. In back is a fire escape stairway with a few people mingling around. As we make our way up the stairs we run into a guy sitting on the steps outside the back door having a cigarette. He looks somewhat familiar, but I hadn’t seen the Descendents since the Minneapolis live show when the album Liveage! was recorded, and any All show I had been to, I was too drunk to remember what the band looked like. As he watches us approach, Huag asks, “are you in the Descendents?” He replies, “yeah,” and introduces himself as Karl Alvarez, the bass player. He has no problems with doing an interview right there on the spot, but he does wonder if we will be able to hear the interview in our recorder. Especially over the loud background noises of the first band, the truck running in the alley, and the bouncers (that had gathered in the alley to watch us) talking. Thus began the most unprepared and spontaneous interview which seemed perfect for a now reformed punk rock band from the ‘80s.
Porter: Karl, didn’t you grow up in Salt Lake City?
Alvarez: Yeah.
Haug: When did you guys start the band?
Alvarez: We didn’t start the Descendents. Billy Stevenson started the band in 1978 as a three piece. Milo Aukerman joined later in 1980. Somewhere in there Milo went to college and Bill got into Black Flag. When they both left their respective things they just bettered the Descendents lineup. That’s where Stephen Egerton and I came in, we joined the Descendents and toured like crazy. We released two live records and the Descendents All record. Milo went back to school to pursue doctorate degrees.
Haug: Did he get his doctorate degree?
Alvarez: Yeah. He’s a Ph.D. in Biochemistry.
Haug: Where did he go to school?
Alvarez: University of Wisconsin?
Haug: Is he from Wisconsin?
Alvarez: No. The band started in Los Angeles. Stephen and I knew Billy real well from the endless Black Flag tours and the Descendents tours would follow that. They needed a bass player and guitar player and we were like, “Ok, we’ll do that.”
Haug: Did you play in a band before that?
Alvarez: Yeah, Stephen and I played in a local punk rock band called The Massacre Guys. I also sang for a band called Bad Yodelers.
Porter: That was here in Salt Lake?
Alvarez: Yeah, in 1980 or so.
Haug: So who sang in The Massacre Guys?
Alvarez: Jamie Shuman from (locals) Crapshoot.
Haug: So you joined the Descendents in ‘86, who did the Descendents tour with in the ‘80s?
Alvarez: M.I.A. Agent Orange. D.O.A. Firehose were starting out back then. Rollins Band was just getting a good start. We played with a lot of good bands.
Porter: Did Robo (from Black Flag) ever play drums for the Descendents?
Alvarez: He never played drums for the Descendents. Bill looks like Robo a little and they drum a lot alike.
Haug: What did you do in Salt Lake City besides play in a band?
Alvarez: I worked at Salt Lake City Public Library for a while and went to school. You know, standard shit.
Haug: So are you in the band All when they play?
Alvarez: Yup.
Haug: I saw you when you played here last year at the U of U.
Alvarez: All is literally the same lineup as the Descendents except for the singer, which is really funny. Now we have two bands.
Haug: So All is still together?
Alvarez: Yeah, hell yeah! We have two bands at once.
Haug: What bands do you currently listen to?
Alvarez: The opening band tonight, Shades Apart, is probably our favorite band right now. This band called Zeik, who is going to be on Epitaph, are also totally worshipable.
Haug: What about back in the day?
Alvarez: Well obviously Black Flag was a big part of our lives; before the Descendents were a band, I learned a lot about playing from that D.O.A. Like everyone else, you get it from everywhere. And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (chuckles). I’ve seen them. They use to play all the Symphony Hall when I was a kid.
Haug: Are you mormon?
Alvarez: No, I’m just a polygamist (laughs).
Haug: Are you married?
Alvarez: Yeah, I’ve been married for four years — so far so good.
Haug: Do you (the band) ever get sick of each other?
Alvarez: Yeah, the standard shit. You always do. It’s like a family, you know? Right now, Stephen and I have been playing together one way or another for about twenty years, and between me, Billy and Stephen, we have been playing together for eleven years now. So it’s very close, a very close stitch. A lot of us are like a distant relative. It gets becoming after a while.
Haug: You’re not a big political band, are you? It seemed like back in the ‘80s a lot of punk bands were singing about the government and religion.
Alvarez: It’s almost as if they thought they were supposed to do that, which is one of the reasons we don’t do that. In fact, I resent being made to feel as if I am supposed to do anything. Fuck that. So we carved out our own territory of, you know, chick songs, food songs, and this and that. I think it was really cool, it was one of a kind in its day, now I guess it’s the standard in the pop-punk world. Ramones did it too. They did it first for sure, at least as far as our generation. We’re the generation after the Ramones.
Haug: Have you ever streaked naked in public?
Alvarez: I’ve been naked in public. Actually, in Salt Lake, as a matter of fact, we used to have this house, it was known locally as The Hell House and it was populated by a bunch of my low life goon friends, just punkers hanging out at parties or whatever. Someone started the tradition this one summer of partying naked. It started with me and one of the guitar players from The Massacre Guys, Paul, stripping ourselves nude in the middle of a crowded party just for the freak out effect of having a couple of naked guys standing there; and it got to spread. I remember distinctly one party where the cops showed up, looked in, and saw a room full of dirty naked people and left without saying a word. I guess people were a little more weird in our circle. In this town, the punk rock community was just mostly really weird people who didn’t fit in anywhere else. You know, punk rock wasn’t a formal thing or anything, and it wasn’t really a big thing either, so you knew everybody and they were all kind of screwy. The chicks were more inclined to get naked, because they were screwed up.
Haug: What year was that?
Alvarez: ‘83, I think.
Haug: Were you going to high school at the time?
Alvarez: No, I was out of high school, I think I was working at the library and living at the University, and played music, or attempted to. There wasn’t really a good state of venues in those days. What there was was the Salt Lake City Indian Center and that was where most of the really great shows like the Dead Kennedys; coming through in ‘72 I believe, I think they kicked it off. T.S.O.L. did a number of shows out here. Black Flag; it seemed like every week they would be playing out here. D.O.A. played out here a lot. A lot of lesser bands, you know? A lot of the Boston bands would make it out. Minor Threat played at a fraternity at the University of Utah.
Haug: Fraternity?
Alvarez: Yeah. Like in ‘82 or ‘83, somewhere in there. In the basement of a fraternity. It was pretty cool. Pretty much, regular venues weren’t a thing here. I mean, when I was really young, like in high school, really young like fifteen, there was a club and it was on the block where — you know where Wellers Books is on South State Street? There was this little club in the basement, The Roxy, and there was a handful of five or six punk rock bands that would actually play at that, this was as early as 1978. They were a lot older than us, so it’s their scene at the time. They had bands like The Borgs, that were really good, and a thing called Modern Hygiene. Two of the guys from Modern Hygiene, one went on to be in Prong in New York, Mike Kirkland and Steve McAllister went on to work sound for C.O.C. They were Utah punk rock guys that kind of got out. They were earlier than us, you know. We were these fifteen year old guys sneaking into their shows. Which we had to do cause in this state, especially back then, I mean, it was a little looser, as far as people running things, because there were so few people into that music, you know? The guy working at the back door of The Roxy was a fan of the music so we would be like, “Kids, well, OK.”
Haug: Was it 21 and over?
Alvarez: Yeah.
Haug: Did you know the guy at the door?
Alvarez: Yeah, he was one of the scene people. Brad who owns Raunch Records in town, is actually — he’s probably the nucleus around which all punk rock in this town has always traditionally centered. He had his radio show on KRCL for years and years. It was on very early — I want to say ‘78. I might be wrong, it might have been earlier. But before he started Raunch in the mid eighties, between his radio show and his promotions and stuff, he’s done more for music in this town than anybody.
Haug: Were they more against punk rock in this town than in other towns?
Alvarez: It was actually better here than in L.A., cause in L.A. they would have police helicopters searching the parking lots of gigs, they saw it as an actual threat. In this town they didn’t actually know what it was. For the longest time, like I said, in the Indian Center or in this one garage we called The Grease Pit. The cops literally had no idea what was going on.
Porter: Did you change your name, or did you used to go by another name?
Alvarez: No, my name is the same as it has always been. Stephen used to be Steve’O, Steve O’Reilly. We went to East High School.
Haug: What’s the worst thing about touring?
Alvarez: When your vehicle breaks down. It happens a lot. Or if you’re sick on tour, like when you get the flu or something like that.
Haug: Have you ever missed a show cause someone was sick?
Alvarez: No, never.
Haug: Have you guys ever been kicked off the stage?
Alvarez: Nah. We had cops come up on the stage on time at [the] UCLA campus, but the kids shouted them down. Basically, the police were thinking, “Well, if we stop the concert now, these kids are going to go nuts and tear the place up, or we can let them finish the three songs left in the set.” They decided to let us finish. So, we’ve never been thrown off.
Haug: Lately, have you recorded anything live?
Alvarez: We did like seven nights at the Whiskey in a row before we started this tour and we recorded all of those, so there will be a live video and recording. There will be a release of that at the end of the year.
Porter: Where was the album Liveage recorded?
Alvarez: Minneapolis. First Avenue.
Porter: Was that the last show before you guys broke up?
Alvarez: No, the last show of the Descendents was in someone’s backyard on a Sunday afternoon in the valley. We didn’t do any of our own songs. We played the Germs, we played some Agent Orange and we just kind of basically quit, you know, and Milo quit, and then we started practicing as All the next day. Dave Smalley flew out so we were like, “Hey Dave, you’re in a new band.”
Porter: He came from Dag Nasty?
Alvarez: Yeah, but he had been living in Israel for two years at the time.
Haug: Did you meet Jello Biafra?
Alvarez: Yeah, he’s a good guy. He is certainly very intelligent and often quite funny. You know that from his records. He’s like he is on the records. That’s the other thing about punk rock, none of us are pretending to be anything other than what we are. He’s just saying, “I have a point and this is who I am.” That’s the whole thing.
Haug: The Dead Kennedys used to have people against them, like the Nazis and people like that. Did you guys have any enemies like that?
Alvarez: Fuck no. Fuck no. I’m not saying we were bruisers or anything, but in our band we’ve got enough muscle and solidarity we’ve never had any problems. The Nazis were losers, that’s the whole thing, they’re losers, they lost the war. Democracy won, live with it.
Haug: The KKK is still prominent, even today.
Alvarez: Of course, it’s everywhere. I figure that shit is only going to end when everyone has a blood relative of a skin color that is not white. That’s the only time that shit is going to end. The human race is fucking stupid. I have to hate myself, you know? You know, a Spanish-Jewish guy. Which means you have Moorish blood which is African, which is Black. So I’m a Black-Jewish-Spaniard, with German, so I’ve got to hate myself.
[Someone sticks their head out of the club door and says something to Alvarez.]
Alvarez: I have to go in now.
Haug: Thanks a lot.
Alvarez: I hope it works for you, man.
Read more archive music interviews:
Henry Rollins: The Catharsis of Anger
Cover Story: Dead Kats